


Of Flowers and Fae

by Procrastinating_Dragonfly



Category: Stray Kids (Band)
Genre: 5+1 Things, Alternate Universe - Flower Shop, Awkwardness, Fae & Fairies, Fae!Jisung, Flower vendor!Changbin because yes, Fluff, Gen, Supernatural Elements, kinda ig
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-29
Updated: 2018-12-29
Packaged: 2019-09-29 22:19:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,169
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17211887
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Procrastinating_Dragonfly/pseuds/Procrastinating_Dragonfly
Summary: Changbin owns a small flowershop. It appears not all of his clients are human.Jisung just wants flowers to remind him of home. Humans are confusing.





	Of Flowers and Fae

**Author's Note:**

  * For [rosenoas](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosenoas/gifts).



> This is like... what, nine days late? I am incredibly sorry. Life gave me the biggest kick in my metaphorical gut. I wrote this with love, but it still needs some editing, which will have to wait. At my giftee: Happy Holidays! I hope you don't hate this uwu...
> 
> EDIT: I finally moved my lazy butt and edited it. I apologize for the very obvious mistakes it had.

 

1.

Rain made Changbin happy in ways that he feared could not have possibly been natural; rather, he suspected, he had spent so much time around flowers that he had started feeling the subtle emotions of plants in the air, and was affected by their happiness. Rain fed his flowers, and his flowers, after all, fed him, in a sort of more or less direct way.

Rain was also exceedingly convenient when he was too tired to deal with clients, as clients would also be too inconvenienced to stop by in the first place, and Changbin could curl up in his chair, surrounded by happy flowers and the sound of the rain, with only the spare blanket he hides under his desk and the canned coffee from the machine thirty meters down the street to warm his body, and the pure happiness of the moment to warm his soul.

When the bell announced a new customer, Changbin debated for half a second whether he should just drop to the floor and pretend to not exist in the first place, but he supposed that would eventually lead to him spilling his coffee and burning himself, not to mention the customer had probably spotted him already, so he ruled in favour of swallowing a sigh of defeat and showing his brightest smile.

“Welcome! How may I help you?” he recited, looking at his customer for the first time.

It was a boy, a young one at that; his rounded, chubby cheeks and wide eyes betrayed his age as being probably even younger than Changbin himself. His hair, bright purple, almost made Changbin think he was from a well-off family, because there was no way he could afford that perfect dye job without constant funds to throw at his hairdresser, but the clothes that hung off his skinny frame were too large, ratty, mismatched - an old pair of sweatpants, holes on the calf, ends rolled up but still covering his shoes, a stained t-shirt, the logo almost faded from what Changbin could only assume was sun exposure, and an oversized jacket dripping excess water onto his freshly-cleaned hardwood floor.

“You- you have flowers,” the boy stuttered, pointing at the vase of orchids sitting close to the entrance. “Do you sell them?”

Changbin stared.

The rain had really decided to take away his blessings this day.

“Yes. Are you looking for a flower in particular, for your- girlfriend?”

Truth be told, he had literally no idea why the boy was here in the first place. He looked way too lost to have any real reason to be in his shop, but Changbin, despite his frankly young age and his father’s strong disbelief in his ability to manage a store, considered himself quite professional, and he wouldn’t drive a potential customer away on purpose.

 _Not that he could afford to,_ a voice in the back of his head suggested, but he shook it away.

“I uh-” the boy’s eyes flittered around, “I just wanted flowers. What can- what can I buy with this?”

Changbin’s eyebrows jumped up when his would-be client carefully unfolded a crumpled note.

1000 won.

 _Not much,_ was Changbin’s first instinct, but something in the boy’s hopeful eyes forced him to bite his tongue and look around.

“Some wildflowers. Maybe a flower from the cut ones - not roses, probably not tulips. Maybe uh, maybe a lisianthus? It really all depends on what you want to tell your partner.”

“I have no partner,” the boy blurted out, facing the nearby tea bush instead of Changbin.

Changbin cocked an eyebrow, but nodded.

“Who are the flowers for?” he asked, looking around to make a mental tally of what he had in store all over again.

“Me, it’s me, I just- I just wanted flowers, what can I get with this?”

Changbin looked around the store, following the boy’s flittering gaze.

“Maybe violets?” he suggested, teeth toying with his lower lip. The boy’s eyes glinted with something Changbin couldn’t identify as he frantically nodded.

“We love violets. Don’t get to see enough of them,” he whispered, gaze immediately finding and settling upon his violets.

Changbin picked up two flowers and, after a moment’s hesitation, added a third.

It wouldn’t hurt him, anyway. There was no one else in the store.

He went to cut the stems, but the boy let out a single, long whine.

“Please don’t hurt them,” his client whispered. He looked like he wanted to say more, but refrained. Changbin blinked in confusion once again, but ultimately just wrapped up the flowers with the stems still intact, handing them to the boy with both hands.

He picked them up with a hand, the other offering him the crumpled bill.

Making an effort to smile pleasantly, Changbin accepted the money, pocketing it directly, and bowing slightly to the boy.

“Thank you,” the other murmured, leaving the store before Changbin could reply.

 

 

> Collapsing in his chair, Changbin leaned back, the silent comfort of the rain and hi empty store lulling him to sleep, surrounded by his friends. 

* * *

2.

The client was back two days later, holding a basket of half eaten fried chicken and sporting a nervous smile that wasn’t there the last time.

“Welcome,” Changbin greeted, bowing slightly without interrupting his work in arranging a bouquet, “How may I help you?”

“Hello,” the boy smiled, dipping his head in greeting. There was something drastically different, but Changbin couldn’t quite pinpoint what. He seemed to be perfectly identical to how he had been last time.

“My name is Jisung,” he said, looking expectantly at Changbin.  
  
“Uh, Seo Changbin. May I help you?”

“Yes! May I have some flowers?”

Changbin held himself back from sighing. It would’ve been very much rude to sigh, even in front of clients with stupid questions.

“Is there anything to your taste?”

Jisung quirked an eyebrow.

“We love all nature.”

“...Right.” Changbin sighed. Sometimes things were too much for politeness, and he really just needed to get rid of some flowers before they withered. They were too dear to him to waste away in his store until their colors faded out and died.

“Does anything catch your eye?” he asked, rubbing his hands on his apron to clear the traces of chlorophyll, smearing green traces over a cloth that was already too stained to really notice the difference.

“Want some of this?” the boy asked instead, offering a half-eaten piece of chicken from his basket. “My... family, we don’t eat meat unless we have to, but it’s actually really good. Should make a habit of it.”

Changbin pondered for half a second, before shaking his head. The boy’s lips pressed in a pout for half a second, but his jovial smile was back so quickly Changbin almost thought he had imagined it.

“Yes, uh, I have more money this time,” he said, hand digging in one of the pockets of his trousers. When it came out, he was holding three shiny stones, for lack of a better descriptor. Changbin knew flowers, not rocks.

“That’s uh, that’s not money, sir,” he huffed, laughing in slight disbelief, only to stop once he realized the boy was entirely serious.

“They’re really pretty, though?” Jisung mumbled, clutching the stones as if they had been offended.

“I, uh… I don’t know how to say this, but I only take Korean won as payment. Cash, credit, whatever, just… it has to be money, you know? The stones are really pretty,” he sighed, somehow not wanting to further upset the teenager, “But I really need to eat. And take care of the flowers.”

The boy bit his lip, eyes downcast, and gently put the stones back in his pocket.

“No, I understand. You really care about your flowers.” The Jisung kid smiled, taking a bow. Changbin held back a sigh of relief as he bowed back.

“I’ll come back with the money you want, okay? Can you keep that one for me?” he asked once he was at the doorsill, pointing at a vase behind Changbin. He didn’t need to turn around to know what it was, so he nodded, mostly out of habit than anything.

The face-splitting grin on Jisung’s face made it seem like a good decision, at the least.

Once the boy was gone, and the store had fallen back to its usual silence, Changbin chuckled in disbelief, and, shaking his hand, picked three ranunculi to put in a separate vase.

For some reason, he would have actually liked for the boy to come back.

* * *

 

3.

Jisung was back four days later, sopping wet with rain, and dripping over Changbin’s hardwood floor again. When he came in, he could barely greet him with a bow and his best pleasant smile, because the middle-aged lady in front of him was definitely of the sort to complain if she felt the lack of any source of attention, and she was placing a very nice order to restock her entire household’s vases, and Changbin was kind of ecstatic at the prospect and had no intention of losing a potential client.

He only got finished twenty minutes later, his notebook filled with scribbles and diagrams and his fingers stained with ink. Jisung’s mop of violet hair stuck out like a sore thumb in the green backdrop of his walls, and his gaze was transfixed on a small jar where Changbin had grouped some statices. The older chuckled, stepping out to approach him and finally breaking him from his trance.

“I’m sorry to keep you waiting, how may I help?”

“I have money,” the boy said as a matter of greeting. “It’s real one this time. The one people like.”

Changbin let out a chuckle, smoothing his apron. He really ought to eventually work on quitting his comfort gestures, but for the moment no one would die if he smoothed his apron a bit.

“Do you still want the ranunculi?” he asked, gesturing at the small vase he had kept on his counter since the boy had last paid visit.

“Is that what you call them? Yes, please.”

“Very well,” Changbin smiled, heading behind the counter to cut the stems of the flowers out of pure habit. Something stopped him before he moved the scissors, and he barely remembered in time that this one boy didn’t want his flowers cut.

“How much are those?”

“4000 won,” Changbin mumbled, handing the small group of flowers over. The boy picked it with one hand again, digging out a 100.000 won banknote to offer Changbin, whose eyes widened in surprise.

He officially gave up on understanding the boy’s financial situation. Not that it was his place in the first place.

“Do you want… more flowers with that?” he asked, taking the money hesitatingly. The boy’s eyes lit up.

“Yes! All the flowers you can give me.”

“That’s a lot of flowers, though,” Changbin bit his lip, looking around the store. There were hundreds of really expensive orders he could think of that still didn’t quite cover that amount of money, not if Jisung wanted to walk out of the store still able to hold the weight.

“Half of that, then?” Jisung suggested, and something in his eyes was sad enough that even if Changbin hadn’t had a moral duty to satisfy him as a client, he would’ve still been unable to say no.

“Do you want any specific flowers?” Changbin asked, already preparing for a negative answer. Jisung, to his surprise, nodded.

“Those,” he said, pointing to Changbin’s jonquils. “One of those. And whatever else you want. Just one of those, though.”

Nodding, Changbin, went to work on his task. He didn’t think much about what he wanted to convey - just something that would be aesthetically pleasing. The single jonquil in the center, lilies, carnations, _anything_ , really.

He ended up with a mix he was pretty satisfied of, and from Jisung’s curious gaze and minuscule, almost invisible nod to himself, he guessed his client was satisfied as well.

“Uh, that still leaves a lot of money though, so your change is-”

“Oh, keep it,” Jisung smiled, grabbing the bouquet. Changbin shook his head, quickly handing him his change.

“Use it next time, if you must.”

“You want me to come again?” Jisung asked, smile growing infinitesimally. The shopkeeper laughed, brushing his hands on his apron.

“Of course, feel free to pass by any time.”

“I will,” Jisung giggled, honest and pure, and he looked so happy for a moment that Changbin felt he was doing the right thing for once in his life.

When Jisung left, he dropped back in his chair, pulling a blanket over his shoulders and staring at the rain outside with newfound giddiness.

* * *

 

4.

Jisung was back two days later, and Changbin took a small breath of relief. The shop felt so empty nowadays, only occasional old ladies visiting him, and rarely striking up any conversation. He had gone as far as to consider calling his mother, but he had had the good sense to stop himself. She wouldn’t have answered, anyway, and he would’ve only felt the emptiness of the space even more harshly.

“Welcome-”

“‘How may I help you?’” Jisung mocked before he could finish the sentence, with no real bite behind it. He seemed even more relaxed this time than he was the last, and Changbin was ultimately glad. A relaxed client was always good, but relaxed humans in general were good.

“How may I help you?” he repeated, smiling back.

Instead of answering him with words, Changbin offered him a 5000 bill. Changbin took a look at it, nodded, and turned around, mumbling “Requests?”.

“No,” came Jisung’s meek voice from behind him. Changbin nodded again, picking out three pink roses from a fresh batch he had only got that very morning. He ought to start stocking more colors - where was lavender when one needed it?

He wrapped them up hastily, somehow feeling that Jisung wouldn’t really care, and handed them carefully over. Jisung accepted them with a small smile and a raised eyebrow.

“Do you want to wait inside until the rain lets out?” Changbin offered instead of commenting, taking a glance at the torrent outside his door. Maybe it wasn’t a perfect conversation starter, but Changbin hadn’t recluded himself in a twenty-five-square-meters hole with plants as his only friends because he was a particularly brilliant conversation partner.

He still managed to not frown when Jisung shook his head.

“I like rain. There is this store nearby that makes something really sweet called a coffee. Do you want some? I’ll go there.”

“You mean… Starbucks?”

“Oh, yeah, of course. That.”

Changbin chuckled.

“No, thank you, I’ll pass. I have tea in the back.”

Jisung frowned, but nodded in resignation.

“I’ll see you soon, then, Seo Changbin,” he said, and he was gone before Changbin could reply, his words still hanging in the air.

With a frustrated sigh and a warm smile, Changbin wiped his hands on his apron.

“I’ll hold you to that.”

* * *

 

 

5.

There was something off about Jisung. Changbin had noticed since the very first day, somehow, and he couldn’t shake off the feeling that the boy was a lot more than he appeared to be. It wasn't the fact that hair had no roots whatsoever, the purple color as brilliant as the very first time he had walked into Changbin’s store, nor was it how he was completely unaccustomed to handling money and apparently having _chicken_ and _coffee_.

His flowers felt something was off. He could tell, even though they had no way of telling him directly.

There was something off about Jisung, and the boy was somehow capable of enrapturing all of Changbin’s attention and affections regardless of how every nerve in his flesh and bones told him the boy was dangerous and he would devour Changbin alive like a wolf would a tiny rabbit.

“How may I help you?” he recited, without paying much attention to his words. Jisung shrugged, gaze fixed on Changbin’s face rather than flowers.

It was uncomfortable, but Changbin didn’t want him to take his eyes off.

“What can I get with this?” he finally asked, offering him a crumpled 1000 won bill.

Changbin pondered over the question for a moment.

“I don’t know, what would you like?”

“Orange rose.” Jisung stated with barely any hint of hesitation. Changbin sometimes wondered if he planned these encounters beforehand.

Still, he went to get the flowers. Because Jisung was a client.

“Thank you,” the purple-haired boy whispered when accepting the single flower. It wasn’t a big one; they both knew full well Changbin could’ve gone for something prettier, but he tried to say something, he supposed. Blooming, shy, whatever that was all about. The flowers knew, not him.

“Have this,” Jisung said, holding it out for Changbin to take back.

Changbin looked at the rose, and blinked.

“No.” He shook his head, taking a step back for good measure. He had no idea what gave him the bravery to, but he managed to speak once more just before Jisung exited the door.

“Come again, though, and I might.”

* * *

 

1.

You should never accept a gift from the fae.

They will be kind. They will pretend to be your friend, but they’re lying, to the extent they can. The fae are fickle, and only aim to have you indebted so they can extort whatever they need from you. You should especially never accept food or drinks from a fae. You will be brought to the point of renouncing your own humanity, until you grow enslaved to them.

You should never accept a gift from the fae.

“Strawberry milk?”

Changbin stared at the offered can for a good half a minute.

He shouldn’t.

“Thank you,” he whispered, accepting the drink, anyway. It was cold to the touch, but Changbin felt unusually warm anyway. Maybe his nerves felt like the can was burning. Maybe it was his face that was unusually warm as well.

Jisung’s eyes were fixed on him the entire time, a silent question waiting without ever being voiced.

Changbin drank slowly, eyes fixed on Jisung’s own. The milk tasted exactly like he expected it to. It was refreshing, slightly too cold, artificially sweet. Tasted much like he would expect strawberry milk to taste like. Good, but not abandon-humanity-good.

It was strawberry milk. Changbin didn’t even like strawberry milk that much.

“It’s human food, if you were wondering,” Jisung volunteered, chuckling slightly. Maybe there was some track of magic there anyway, because Changbin’s heart fluttered and he wanted to cry a little.

“Yeah, it is,” he murmured, fiddling with the baby pink border of the carton.

“It’s a gift.” Jisung continued, watching the flowers beside him this time. “You’re supposed to give one back.”

 _That’s not how gifts work_ , Changbin wanted to say, but it was, according to the fae.

He reached over to pluck a tulip from its companions and offer it to the younger boy, who laughed in delight.

“Yes. That’s definitely a yes.”

**Author's Note:**

> I will! Eventually write a brief translation of the flowers' meanings here! Soon, anyway.  
> EDIT:  
> Okay here we go! **Disclaimer:** this is all off the internet and also it's all western meanings. I couldn't find anything about Korean flower language -_-". I am far from an expert, yadda, yadda. 
> 
> _Violets_ mean modesty, but are not that crucial to the fic.  
>  _Ranunculi_ symbolize charm, conveying the message that the recipient is charming/attractive.  
>  _Jonquils_ have several meanings, but I considered both 'domestic bliss' and 'desire' here. They can also mean 'friendship', if you prefer reading things that way! Unrelated to the story, jonquilsare also known as narcissus flowers, which is fairly self-explanatory.   
> _Pink roses_ represent a more innocent love, sweetness, gratitude, and admiration among others. You get the gist. The _lavender roses_ Changbin mentions symbolize enchantment and fascination, among others.   
> _Orange roses_ symbolize passion, but also a sense of fascination. (technically you should consider the latter here but ssshh)  
>  _Tulips_ are a declaration of love. Pretty straightfoward.
> 
>  
> 
> ...Pretty please, leave a comment or kudos? I would be most delighted. And good whatever-time-of-the-day to y'all.


End file.
